Point guard has to do more than score. I came in in the middle of this argument, but I don’t get the assumption that Simpson doesn’t improve, perhaps a lot. The worst mistake fans make is in thinking that players are what we peg them as at any given point in time, especially Beilein’s players. I’m with the people who think that Simpson’ss the obvious starter, taking the lion’s share of the minutes again next year. And–yeah–his ferocity on D in practice really might be harrowing for other players.

Well, I’ll be excited and eager for next year to begin! The open practice can’t get here soon enough for me. Yes, there will be pieces missing from this year’s great team and the run they made, but there will be exciting new pieces too. And those who return will be better. I, and I know many others of you, can’t wait to see the maestro put it all together.

You’re just being fatuous at this point. We didn’t win the national championship game, so clearly there is some unrealized upside.

Simpson limitations this year resulted in playing for a natty.

Seriously? No, they did not. His poor shooting is not the reason we made it that far.

Can’t win with Simpson shooting so poorly. Going to be damn difficult to be a threat for a National Title with PG play like that.

We won several games despite Simpson’s poor shooting, not because of it, or did you miss all those Hack-A-Zavier end games down the stretch? We didn’t just lose the national championship game, we got blown out. Getting to the title game does not mean you’re automatically a legitimate threat to win it. We were an 8-point underdog, the largest in several years. If not for a very favorable bracket we may not have made it at all.

If saying Simpson limited this teams upside is rational, then I’m not offended for being rationally challenged.

You seem to be unable or unwilling to discriminate between his overall contribution to the team and the very obvious weaknesses in his game.

Michigan with a lot of big movers in the updated Rivals 150! Johns up to 57, Castleton up to 85, Dejulius up to 96, and Brazdeikis still a 5 star, which would make him top 30 at the least if he played in the US. Throw in Nunez and this jumps them to number 8 in the team rankings.

Simpson needs to average 8-12 points per game next year. However he gets there, will be important to the team’s success.

I think one of the biggest question marks for next season is how will they defend the pick and roll. Wagner and Teske are two very different types of defenders. Can Teske defend the pick and roll like Mo did or will they have to make a change? I think Teske’s ability to defend like they did this year will change the conversation on how much they go “small” next year.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be publishing subscriber breakdowns of Michigan's rotational players featuring analytics, video and graphics. These pieces will look back on the year that was and a look ahead to their role on next year's team. Today we...

MSU and Purdue have good efficiency numbers, but notice when we would beat them it would be Moe’s great games?

Um, you may want to watch the BTT again - in the MSU game, Wagner had the worst offensive game of any starter: 4-14 from the field, 1-7 from 3. The rest of the team hit 44% from three.

In the Purdue game, Jon Teske played more minutes than Mo and had his best game of the season - although Wagner was very good in the 17 minutes he played.

I understand everyone’s concern about the offense, but I can’t help being excited that the team is returning 4 of the best 5 defenders from a team that had the 3rd highest defensive efficiency in the country. I expect at least incremental offensive improvement from Simpson, Matthews, and Teske; I’m not in the least worried about Livers and the depth from Johns and Brazdeikis. The big variable is the 2 guard: if Poole has a breakout season, we will contend for the Final Four; if his defense is so bad that he loses his starting job to Brooks or Nunez, it will be a more difficult season.

The big issue for next year I think is that in the last few when you reaaaaallllllyyyyyy needed a bucket, for the most part MAAR would come through. At least that’s how it felt. Someone is going to have to step up in that regard big time.

I think we will have at least a few playmakers. But with the exception of Matthews, they are going to be very young. Best guess is, like seemingly every year, we’ll start slow, but those roles will flush out over time.

The great part is Iggy isn’t young, albeit he will be inexperienced for the college game obviously. Iggy or Matthews will be the second playmaker. Neither of those two will be young in terms of age luckily.

Feels like any offseason discussion keeps going back to this, but Poole is such a HUGE key for next year’s success.

Iggy is old for a freshman, but he is still younger than Livers and Brooks. We will need him to be the playmaker to compensate for the leaving of Wagner. He will attack the rim relentlessly, but I hope that he will also find his teammates when the defenders collapse and avoid turnovers. his defense should be okay as he will most likely play 4.

Being a former 5 star recruit in his fourth year of college, Mathews should dominant physically against the rest of the conference.

Poole will be fine, need to tight up his defense. He is not MAAR but he could be Levert.